Florida Police Caught Creating Illegal Lists for Tracking Gun Owners
Matt Agorist
TheFreeThoughtProject.com
October 29, 2019
Tallahassee, FL — According to Florida state law, Statute 790.335, “no state governmental agency or local government, special district, or other political subdivision or official, agent, or employee of such state or other governmental entity or any other person, public or private, shall knowingly and willfully keep or cause to be kept any list, record, or registry of privately owned firearms or any list, record, or registry of the owners of those firearms.” Government agencies found in violation of this law, who keep lists of firearms owners, are committing a felony, according to the legislation. Nevertheless, cops in Florida were caught doing just that.
A recent discovery by Ammoland.com, alleges that police in Florida are using information to compile these unlawful lists of gun owners in the state — a direct violation of Florida law. Moreover, despite getting caught red-handed, the Charlotte County State’s Attorney’s Office determined that the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department did not violate any laws in compiling the lists.
The department was able to create these lists because of an apparent glitch in the system. As Ammoland reports:
Pawnbrokers are required to enter information on firearms transactions into the FINDER system. The system transmits the serial number of the firearm along with the make and model to the local sheriffs’ department to make sure that the person pawning the gun, did not steal it. A bug in the system also transmitted the names and addresses of the transfers to local law enforcement. The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department used the information to create a list of gun owners.
While the initial discovery exposed the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department, according to Ammoland, this corruption extends to other departments throughout state. According to reporter Andrew Sheets, who helped uncover this abusive tyranny, there are emails from the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department detailing how the department shares this information with other law enforcement agencies.
The North Port Police Department and the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office have both been implicated in the abuse scandal.
According to Sheets, the sheriff’s department had no problem emailing him a completely unredacted list of pawn shop transactions via email. Ammoland points out that this file contains not only information about the firearm, but also the names of the person pawning the gun, putting them at risk of robbery and violating their privacy rights.
The Rest…HERE
